Haki Yetu
Our Rights

Contact us: info@hakiyetu.org

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    • What We Do
    • Contact Us
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    • Resources
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    • Store

Contact us: info@hakiyetu.org

Haki Yetu
Our Rights
  • Home
  • What We Do
  • Contact Us
  • Events
  • Resources
  • Gallery
  • News
  • Store

Welcome to Haki Yetu. Change starts with you! Join us today!

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Our Staff

From our President and Founder

 Born in the DR Congo, I have watched as my father and sister died mysteriously, just days after standing up to the dictatorial government who had instigated the ongoing Civil War, which would claim the lives of millions of Congolese. In 1998, at the beginning of the Civil War, and after watching the countless deaths and destruction of many innocent lives, I was moved to go preach on National TV (RTNC) . 


During the live evening news, I went to deliver a message about national unity and reconciliation, as a way to bring peace and build consensus among the various opposing groups, destroying the stability of the country. Although I was expressing my right to freedom of opinion and expression, which includes freedom to receive and impart information and ideas through any media, I ended up being arrested during the news hour, as thousands of viewers watched horrendously how I was being beaten and tortured during my arrest. 


The cruel and inhuman treatment which I received as I desperately clang to my right to life, from one death row to another, watching the execution of my fellow inmates, are simply indescribable, for no human being should be subjected to such degrading punishment. Although Congolese law prohibits arbitrary arrests and detentions, government security forces routinely arbitrarily arrested and detained persons. I was kept for several months without my family knowing about my whereabouts, in unsafe and unsanitary prison conditions. I was tortured many times during my stay at various prison cells with unusual conditions of confinement, detained for prolonged times without ever been charged of any crime, denying me of my right to be recognized before the law. I was guilty with no possibility of ever being proven innocent. With the help of international human rights organizations such as the Red Cross International, I was able to receive medical care for my wounds after several months of detention. I was then allowed a public trial where I was finally acquitted for lack of evidence and false imprisonment.


Upon my release, after having miraculously escaped execution, I vowed to defend the rights of the oppressed and change the horrific and inhumane conditions of those who were still detained in DR Congo prisons and jails, and denied of their rights as human beings.In New York City, I came across many immigrants with difficulties accessing services as a result of language and cultural barriers. In cases where they received services, they knew very little about their own rights and therefore, could not articulate or advocate for these rights when they were infringed upon. 


Along with other activists, Haki Yetu was created to give a voice to the voiceless, provide needed services while giving people the tools to understand and advocate for their own rights. By empowering one individual, we believe we can bring change and transformation, while replicating leaders in disenfranchised and marginalized communities. Whether it is in combating poverty among low income communities, fighting to preserve healthy families, ensuring that individuals in need receive crucial services, promoting the rights of the disabled or advocating for women’s rights, Haki Yetu remains dedicated to the advancement of human rights. It is our hope that the principle that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights shall be held to the highest standards and that societies will work to ensure these rights are not being infringed upon. As we continue the work of advocating for equality and justice, I strongly urge you to join our cause of defending the rights of the oppressed and marginalized, for the violation of rights of one individual in our community, violates the rights of all of us. 


Thus, leaving behind race, creed, religion, social, economic and political ideologies, let us join to promote our “Haki Yetu” (Our Rights). Once we understand our rights, we can build ourselves as individuals, we can build our communities, we can build our countries, and we can build the world.  

Our Board of Directors

Click below the read the profiles of our board members

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Meet our executive Director: Barbara Victome

Additional Information

As a co-founder of the organization, Barbara has served as Haki Yetu's acting executive director since its inception and has been the life and breath behind our human rights initiatives, working tirelessly to advocate for the needs of immigrants and refugees. 

Video

Bringing awareness to the mass rapes and the conflict cell phones in the DR Congo. Interview with Dr. Bill Mlongetcha Jackson (CUNY documentary).

About Us

Thanks to our dedicated team members, we are able to provide culturally-aware services in over 5 languages!

Thanks to our dedicated team members, we are able to provide culturally-aware services in over 5 languages!

Thanks to our dedicated team members, we are able to provide culturally-aware services in over 5 languages!

We are so grateful for the work of our volunteers and supporters. Learn how you can partner with us.

Our Team

Thanks to our dedicated team members, we are able to provide culturally-aware services in over 5 languages!

Thanks to our dedicated team members, we are able to provide culturally-aware services in over 5 languages!

We are so grateful for the work of our volunteers and supporters. Learn how you can partner with us.

Get Involved

Thanks to our dedicated team members, we are able to provide culturally-aware services in over 5 languages!

Get Involved

Your collaboration with us to stop the rapes by signing the petition: (Link)

• Spread the word! Help us to raise awareness about the issue of mass rapes

• Collaborate with us to stop mass rapes

• Volunteer to assist with our fundraisers

• Advertise through our fundraisers to support the cause

You can do something now!

• Make a Generous Contribu

Your collaboration with us to stop the rapes by signing the petition: (Link)

• Spread the word! Help us to raise awareness about the issue of mass rapes

• Collaborate with us to stop mass rapes

• Volunteer to assist with our fundraisers

• Advertise through our fundraisers to support the cause

You can do something now!

• Make a Generous Contribution to

Haki Yetu

• Join our Advocacy Board! 

• Volunteer with us! 

• Your great ideas are always welcome! 

Our causes

Immigrants and Refugee Rights

Economic Rights and Empowerment

Economic Rights and Empowerment

Haki Yetu works to advocate, defend and expand the rights of immigrants and refugees living in primarily in the state of New York, , regardless of immigration status by promoting  justice and providing resources for low-income immigrants and refugee to pursue and defend their legal rights. We also hold "Know Your Rights" seminars in an effort to educate immigrants, refugees and the public of their rights in the United States.

Economic Rights and Empowerment

Economic Rights and Empowerment

Economic Rights and Empowerment

  

Understanding economic human rights and the reasons why we do not now have these rights allows us to see poverty differently, and to see different priorities and solutions. Once we define poverty as the absence of economic human rights, we begin to see poverty not only as an enemy of human dignity, but as an enemy of justice.

With a strong focus on economic empowerment, Haki Yetu believes that every community has the potential to be self-sufficient, independent and generate its own resources when given the means to do so. This is the reason why Haki Yetu, through its economic empowerment initiative, Haki Yetu facilitates financial management/ budgeting, job readiness and job training.

Disability Rights

Economic Rights and Empowerment

International Human Rights

  

  

Haki Yetu believes that people living with disabilities have the right to family, social, and intimate relationships. The program provides resources to help individuals with mental retardation and developmental disabilities in gaining access to necessary services and supports appropriate to the needs of the individual.

Haki Yetu offers a wide range of programs and services designed to support people with disabilities in leading more independent and productive lives. These include community living services, adult day programs, vocational services, service coordination and family support services.

Haki Yetu also facilitates support groups in languages such as English, French, Haitian Creole, Swahili, designed to provide education about disability rights, information, care and support to families of individuals with special needs.

International Human Rights

Women's Rights and Violence Intervention

International Human Rights

   

Eradicating Sexual Violence against Women and Girls

Through education and culturally-appropriate services, Haki Yetu works to bring more understanding on the effects of mass rapes on women victims and the communities where women are used as weapons of war, in places where rapes are rampant.

We are also committed to challenge cultural stigmas of shunning women victims of sexual violence, while providing rape survivors with the tools to rebuild their fragmented lives.

We also aim to develop a process of reconciliation by working with men in communities as well as perpetrators to stop mass rapes against women.


  Protecting the Rights of Prisoners

Very often prisons take the lowest priority in post-conflict environments, as people deprived of their liberty are often denied of their rights and disregarded. As a result, prisoners typically suffer from: extreme prisons overcrowding, lack of food, absence of adequate medical care and poor sanitation, poor management and security, rampant political interference and prolonged pre-trial detention.

Haki Yetu works to ensure that prisoners’ rights are respected, they are treated with respect and dignity, and that standards of punishment are met.


Combatting International Poverty

Having access to an adequate standard of leaving such as food, clothing, housing and other services is the right of every human being. Poverty robs people of these rights, which constitutes a human rights violations.

Haki Yetu is committed to fight various aspects of poverty around the world, through economic empowerment programs focusing on income-generating strategies designed to improve health and education outcomes for individuals and their families, thus maximizing the potential to provide for basic needs.


Defending the Rights of Children around the world

This program works to end all forms of abuses against children from who are oppressed and marginalized around the world due to war, poverty, HIV/AIDS and their government's failure to protect their rights.

We believe that all children regardless of nationality, religion, economic and social status deserves appropriate care and nurturing. Our areas of interest are:

• Child slavery

• Child poverty

• Children soldiers

• Child Trafficking

• Child abuse

Family Rights & Advocacy

Women's Rights and Violence Intervention

Women's Rights and Violence Intervention

Haki Yetu places a strong value on the family as the locus of change in any given community, for if families are healthy and strong, the community also will be strong. Through its family preservation program, Haki Yetu runs parenting groups along with children’s groups designed to strengthen the foundation of the family and reinforce positive parenting skills among families.


 Parenting Support

We believe that every parent has the potential to make important contributions to their families and communities when they are aware of their rights and are offered the appropriate outlets to express these rights.

Our parenting groups, which are offered in English, French, Haitian Creole and Swahili, focus on building parents' existing strengths with respect and dignity, while providing them with the tools to become effective parents and successful members of their society. 

· 

Family Preservation and Reunification

Through this program, we target children and families where reasonable suspicion exists that child abuse or neglect has occurred, posing risk of placement or replacement, and/or the family is experiencing other stressors which may inhibit the family's well-being.

We believe that families want to do the best they can and will therefore thrive when we build on their existing strengths and help provide the resources they need. When they are knowledgeable of their rights and treated with dignity, families are most often open to receiving help, for they are then acknowledged as the experts in their own lives, and are encouraged to work in partnership with service providers.


Children’s Rights

The Convention on the Rights of the Child

(UNICEF) guarantees that all children, regardless of their race, religion or abilities, have rights and should not be treated unfairly. The program focuses on teaching children about their rights, while preparing them to become leaders and human rights advocates in the future.

The program also provides:

· Individual and group counseling for children who have been victimized or witnessed abuse

· Truancy prevention

· Play Therapy

· Teens focus groups designed to highlight challenges and pressures faced by the younger population

· Fatherhood Initiative

Through educational workshops, support groups and social activities, this program empowers fathers to be involved and play an active role in the lives of their children by providing them with the tools to effectively care, support and nurture their children..

Women's Rights and Violence Intervention

Women's Rights and Violence Intervention

Women's Rights and Violence Intervention

  

Women in all cultures, races, sexual orientations, occupations, income levels, and ages are battered by boyfriends, lovers, husbands, and partners. For Immigrant women however, reporting violence can be a challenge as they often feel trapped in abusive relationships because of immigration status, language and cultural barriers, social isolation, and lack of financial resources.

Haki Yetu offers battered women and survivors a place where they can heal, have their voices heard and learn about their rights to safety as women. Through community educational workshops and referrals, women also learn options towards financial independence, and ways to survive domestic violence.

As most violence takes place in families that continue living together, violence thus affects all members of the family. In many instances, further violence can be prevented without breaking up the family, which is the reason why all family members should have access to services in their community that will help them prevent the reoccurrence of violence. Finally, we believe that violence is a learned behavior and that it can be unlearned.


 Domestic Violence

Haki Yetu works actively on an ongoing basis to empower women to transcend their traditional roles and gain the knowledge, strengths, and skills they need to take control over their own lives. We also undertake public information campaigns to educate the public about the need for an end to violence and the implementation of gender equity. The program provides culturally and linguistically competent services ranging from shelters to counseling, offering domestic violence victims and their children with the support as they work to be self-sufficient and free from violence.


Sexual Assault

sexual assault, stalking, and support for victims, survivors and others impacted by sexual violence.


 Men’s Intervention Groups

It is our belief that in order to effectively tackle the issue of violence toward women, we must first look at the men who often instigate the violence. This program provides individual counseling and facilitates groups for men who voluntarily attend, acknowledge any form of abuse toward their partners, wives and girlfriends. 

As men learn about their own rights, they gain a better understanding of different types of abuses perpetrated toward women, and take personal responsibility to end violence against women and become advocates for women's rights as a principle for social justice. 


Partnering with youth to end violence

Haki Yetu is concerned about reducing violence against women among young immigrants living in NYC, for it is our belief that if we fail to pay attention to the youth population, adolescent men risk repeating the patterns and practices of their elders and young girls are likely to be victims of date rape now and of domestic violence and other abuse later in their lives. The project provides empowerment workshops for elementary to high school youth to break traditional patterns of violence and inequity and to empower the next generation to seek gender equity and nonviolent means of expressing their anger, while learning about ways to keep themselves safe from violence.

We believe that there is an urgency to educate young men and boys, especially those of the immigrant communities , of the disparity that exists in gender violence and to provide them with tools so that they can become active promoters of violence prevention.

International Human Rights

International Human Rights

International Human Rights


Ending Mass rapes in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The project seeks to raise awareness among non-governmental, religious and international organizations about mass rapes of women and girls in the Democratic Republic of Congo. 

As many communities and families have experienced deterioration due to sexual violence, the project seeks to build community cohesion and empower communities to take a stand toward eradicating the destabilizing sexual violence in the communities.

By empowering the communities greatly affected by sexual violence, we can begin the dialogue and look at various strategies to end rapes of women and girls, while providing communities with the tools to rebuild their fragmented lives.


How you can join us in this cause:


Join Our Efforts

International Human Rights

International Human Rights

Our Causes & Initiatives

International Human Rights

Our Causes & Initiatives

Our causes are rooted in human rights, upholding the dignity of the person:


• Refugee and Immigrants Rights 

• Family Rights & Advocacy 

• Economic Rights 

• Women's Rights & Violence Prevention 

• Disabilities Rights 

• International Human Rights & Advocacy



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Tell My Story: Black Immigrant Women break their Silence

Victims and survivors of domestic violence and sexual abuse share their stories- A virtual project.

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